Hi,
This is not a technical question, it's more a call for opinions on a
general work process with tagging and release management.
What I'm concerned about is the use of complex tags (described here:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch04s06.html#svn-ch-4-sect-6.2)
In short:
a complex tag is a tag created from a working copy that contains not one
single revision of a whole directory tree but where single
folders/subtrees or files are selectively checked out from different
revisions or even locations/branches.
I'm talking about using complex tags for tagging stable versions or
releases of production projects. Why? Because developers and project
leads at my company do it that way and I think it's bad and have to
convince them it's bad
In my opinion using a complex tag to tag a version/release of an project
is really bad because:
a.) it's difficult to track which folders in the tag came from which
original revision or location. If you want to know where they came from
you have to check each folder in the log for it's "copy-from"
b.) resulting from a.) it's almost impossible to recreate such a tag
unless you still have the exact working copy you used before. Assuming
the complex tag is gone (I mean GONE, not in repository history or
whatever - unrecoverable) and the working copy is gone (who keeps
working copies stable forever?) you can't recreate the version just with
the history on trunk.
c.) isn't a complex tag more like selectively merging changes into a
specific branch and tagging this branch? This approach is not suffering
from a.) and b.) and thus has many advantages.
Arguments from project leads I have to fight are:
I.) we don't want branches! It's impossible to keep track of changes in
branches and merge them! There is no "integrator" (rem.: Isn't creating
a complex tag namely doing selective checkouts of folders/revisions some
kind of integration - deciding what goes in the release and what not?)
II.) People always commit to trunk, if some features aren't complete we
disable them in the application and they are not active - they only have
to be compileable.
I'd like to see your opinions on this!
Cheers,
Reinhard
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Received on Wed Nov 15 10:09:27 2006